Dwight Clark's soaring touchdown catch, which sent the 49ers to the 1982 Super Bowl, is one of the lasting moments in Candlestick Park history. / Phil Huber, AP

by Jorge L. Ortiz, USA TODAY Sports

by Jorge L. Ortiz, USA TODAY Sports

The most fervent desires of plenty of bundled-up, shivering fans in San Francisco are finally coming true: Candlestick Park will get blown up.

The much-maligned, long-outdated home of the San Francisco 49ers and formerly the Giants, infamous for the sight of hot-dog wrappers swirling on the field while players and fans braved the frigid night wind, will meet its demise soon after the end of the next NFL season, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

The 49ers are moving to a new stadium in Santa Clara, some 40 miles south, for the beginning of the 2014 season, leaving The Stick without a tenant.

The plans call for the ballpark to be demolished in a 30-second implosion and for the site to be used for a mall and residential/office complex.

Candlestick Park, initially built for the Giants in 1960, was the scene of great triumphs for the 49ers, who won all five of their Super Bowls after moving there in 1971. Three critical postseason plays that became part of the team's lore â?? The Catch (Dwight Clark, 1982), The Catch II (Terrell Owens, 1998) and The Catch III (Vernon Davis, 2012) â?? took place on the Candlestick grass.

The Giants hosted World Series games there in 1962 and 1989 â?? both losing causes â?? and the Beatles played their last concert at the stadium in 1966.

But the antiquated facility had long outlived its usefulness, as Recreation and Park Department general manager Phil Ginsburg acknowledged to The Chronicle.

"Everything has a life,'' he said, "and Candlestick has exceeded it.''

Sitting hard by the western edge of San Francisco Bay in a site known as Candlestick Point, the stadium in its younger days worked mostly fine for football, which is typically played in the day during months when the San Francisco weather tends to be milder.

But it was a nightmarish venue for baseball, what with the wind and fog sweeping in during the chilly summer nights. Giants pitcher Stu Miller was forced into a balk by a wind gust during the 1961 All-Star Game, an incident that later took on a life of its own and contributed to the park's inhospitable reputation.

No wonder the Giants were so giddy to escape after the 1999 season, relocating to a scenic downtown ballpark now known as AT&T Park.

Candlestick might have been at its best during the 1989 World Series between the Giants and the cross-bay Oakland Athletics. The building held forth when an earthquake measured at 7.1 on the Richter scale shook the region shortly before Game 3, killing 63 people, causing more than $5 billion in damage and forcing the Series to be interrupted for 10 days.

There were no injuries reported at Candlestick, where a full house initially roared in approval when the tremor stopped, unaware of the destruction it had left behind.

Surely some of the 62,000 in attendance that day, Oct. 17, 1989, feel a debt of gratitude for Candlestick's sturdiness in the face of the powerful Loma Prieta quake. For most other visitors to the obsolete facility, however, the sense of "good riddance'' is inevitable.